Technical Field
The present patent application relates to a method and to a device for recording images of vehicles that pass a section between an entrance and an exit at excessive speed.
Background Art
Certain traffic monitoring tasks require images to be recorded of a vehicle as preservation of evidence for enforcing traffic violations. Examples include the so-called “Section Control” or “Point-to-Point” speed monitoring, in which the times at which a vehicle enters and exits the section segment passed through by the vehicle are measured and used to determine the speed. The traffic monitoring systems employed for this purpose must comply with strict data protection stipulations so as to exclude an impermissible creation of movement profiles of the motorists to an extent as great as possible. For example, for section control to be carried out, legal regulations in Austria and Germany require that a lasting identification of a vehicle and the passage data thereof is only permitted when speeding exists.
Previously known systems attempt to satisfy these data protection requirements by deleting, without a trace, all the recorded data within a guaranteed time period, for example 8 minutes, after the vehicle has been identified at the entrance and exit and a speed has been measured based thereon, if no speed violation exists (see F. Albrecht, “Section Control in Deutschland” (Section Control in Germany), Traffic Law, Zeitschrift füdie Praxis der Verkehrsjuristen, 2009). This procedure continues to entail uncertainties because the vehicle is identified at the entrance based on a unique vehicle license plate number and must be recognized at the exit based on the same vehicle license plate number. However, the vehicle license plate number allows an unambiguous conclusion of the vehicle owner, which violates the privacy of this owner.